Early Muslim traders in South-East Asia
G.R. Tibbetts, a British orientalist and librarian, published this comprehensive survey in 1957, tracing the commercial activities of Muslim traders from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea in South-East Asia from the rise of Islam through the Mongol period. His central argument is that Arab and Persian merchants from the Gulf region dominated the maritime trade between the Middle East and the Far East, that this trade peaked in the tenth century, and that the geographical reach of Arab commerce in the archipelago was far more limited than later scholars had assumed.
Summary
Tibbetts begins by establishing the pre-Islamic commercial context, showing how Sassanid Persian merchants controlled the sea routes to India and possibly China, and how the unification of the Middle East under Islam created a new and growing market for Far Eastern goods. Under the Umayyads, trade remained largely overland and military in character, but the Abbasid foundation of Baghdad and Samarra, both situated at the junction of overland and maritime routes, stimulated a revival of sea commerce. The T’ang dynasty’s openness to foreign influence provided the complementary Far Eastern end of this exchange, with Chinese ports welcoming merchants from all directions.
The bulk of the article is devoted to a close reading of the principal Arab geographical and commercial texts—the Akhbar al-Sin wa’l-Hind (c. 851), Ibn Khurdadhbih’s Kitab al-masalik wa’l mamalik (c. 846–886), the works of Abu Zaid, Mas’udi, Buzurg b. Shahriyar, and Idrisi—cross-referenced with Chinese sources including the T’ang dynastic histories, Chau Ju-kua’s Chu-fan-chi, and the accounts of I-tsing and Kanshin. Tibbetts demonstrates that Arab knowledge of the archipelago grew steadily through the ninth and tenth centuries, encompassing the west coast of Sumatra as far south as the Batu Islands, the coasts of the Strait of Malacca, and the east coast of Sumatra to Palembang. However, he argues against the identification of various mythical islands (Waqwaq, Bartayil) with real locations further east, and concludes that the Arabs did not venture beyond approximately 110°E in the archipelago, with the sole exception of eastern Java, where the Leran tombstone (dated 1082 or 1101 CE) provides the only firm archaeological evidence of Muslim presence.
A critical turning point in the narrative is the massacre of foreign merchants in Canton in 878 during the Huang Ch’ao rebellion. This event, recorded by Abu Zaid and Mas’udi, effectively severed the direct maritime link between the Gulf and China and caused Kalah (Kedah) to become the entrepôt where Muslim and Chinese vessels met. Tibbetts argues that the exodus of merchants from Canton led to the formation of permanent Muslim trading colonies in South-East Asia, particularly at Kalah, Lamuri, and the capital of the Maharaja of Zabaj (Sri Vijaya). He also addresses the long-standing scholarly debate over the Chinese term “P’u,” arguing that it is ambiguous and may represent either the Arabic “Abu” or the Cham-Indonesian title “Po/Pu,” and that each individual case must be assessed on its own merits rather than assumed to indicate Arab origin.
Key Findings
- The Chinese shift from calling Gulf traders “Po-se” (Persians) to “Ta-shih” (Arabs) corresponds roughly with the beginning of the Abbasid dynasty rather than the advent of Islam, indicating that Arab commercial ascendancy over Persian was a gradual process (pp. 10–11).
- The 878 massacre of foreign merchants in Canton by the rebel Huang Ch’ao disrupted direct Gulf-to-China trade and transformed Kalah (Kedah) into the “general rendezvous” where Muslim vessels from Siraf and Oman met Chinese boats (pp. 19–20).
- Two Abbasid coins discovered at Kedah, one clearly dated A.H. 234 (A.D. 848), provide material confirmation of Arab commercial presence at Kalah during the period described in the textual sources (p. 33).
- The Leran tombstone in eastern Java, bearing the date 475 or 495 A.H. (1082 or 1101 CE), is the only definite archaeological proof of Muslims in Java before the fourteenth century, though whether the carver was Arab, Persian, or a local convert remains uncertain (pp. 35, 40–41).
- A conservative estimate places the maximum extent of Arab trading activity in the archipelago at the longitude of 110°E, with no evidence of regular commerce with the Moluccas, the Gulf of Siam, or the interior of Borneo (p. 36).
- The Chinese term “P’u” in merchant names is etymologically ambiguous, potentially representing either the Arabic “Abu” or the Cham-Indonesian noble title “Po/Pu,” and cannot be used as a reliable indicator of Arab ethnicity without individual contextual analysis (pp. 30–31).
Conclusion
Tibbetts concludes that Muslim trading activity in the Far East expanded gradually over six centuries, reaching its zenith at the end of the ninth and during the tenth century in synchrony with the prosperity of the Abbasid heartland. After the fall of Siraf under the Buwayids and the decline of Mesopotamia as a commercial hub, direct maritime contact between the Middle East and the Far East diminished, yet Muslim traders continued to operate in China and South-East Asia through permanent colonial communities. These settlements, acting as agents for traders at home and engaging in local inter-archipelago commerce, were the mechanism by which Islam slowly penetrated the region, reaching as far as eastern Java by the end of the eleventh century.
Context
- This article was published in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, the principal scholarly journal of MBRAS, and represents a landmark synthesis of Arab and Chinese primary sources on pre-modern maritime trade in the region.
- Tibbetts’ work drew heavily on the earlier French scholarship of G. Ferrand (particularly L’élément persan dans la littérature arabe and Relations de voyages) and on the German editions of Hirth and Rockhill, positioning itself within the mid-twentieth-century effort to reconstruct the commercial history of the Indian Ocean from primary textual evidence.